Monday, March 24, 2014

Nymphomaniac

Grade: 77/B+

Lars von Trier is many things: a provocateur, a neurotic, a
depressive, a trickster, and an immensely skilled filmmaker. These traits
frequently wrestle with each other within his films, with the deliberately
galling elements clashing with the always beautiful form, or the prankish side
juxtaposing oddly with the miserable. Rarely has this been more clear than with
his new two-part epic Nymphomaniac, a
bold, often brilliant, frequently frustrating and always fascinating film
that’s as much a self-searching personal statement as it is a new work from a
master filmmaker.

Frequent von Trier muse Charlotte Gainsbourg stars as Joe, a
self-identified nymphomaniac who’s found beaten up in an alley by the
analytical Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). Seligman asks Joe how she ended up
there, and she proceeds to lay out her life story: her close relationship with
her father (Christian Slater), her deflowering as a young woman (Stacy Martin)
by the callous Jerǒme (Shia LaBeouf, briefly taking a break from not being
famous anymore) and their subsequent relationship, her encounters with a
dominator (Jamie Bell) and other men, and the vast lengths she’ll go to satisfy
herself. As she confesses to being a bad person, Seligman tries to understand
and empathize with it by drawing parallels to his knowledge of the world.

Nymphomaniac was
released in a bifurcated form not unlike that of Kill Bill (although longer versions of both segments are on the
way); as with Tarantino’s film, the split is more commercially oriented than it
is in service to the work, but there is a decided difference between the two
halves. Nymphomaniac’s first two
hours see von Trier the prankster at work. Shocking and audacious as some of
the material might be (a blowjob that has to be on a prosthetic but still looks
awfully convincing; numbers showing up onscreen for every thrust from LaBeouf),
it’s wildly funny stuff, made more so by Seligman’s often irrelevant
observations (the second half even shows Joe losing patience with him, “I think
this was one of your worst diversions.”)

But there’s a careful balancing act between the hilarious
moments and the deeplyuncomfortable
ones, including an astonishing sequence in which Uma Thurman, playing the wife
of one of Joe’s conquests, arrives at her apartment to take her sons on a tour
to “the whoring bed.” There’s an element of dark comedy at work, but it doesn’t
undercut the genuine pain on display. What’s remarkable is that, for a long
time, the film’s attempts to find meaning in these episodes – whether these
moments of pleasure and sadism are signs of a bad person or an exploratory one
– avoid feeling didactic, even as Seligman analyzes and overanalyzes everything
Joe tells him. The film shows von Trier drawing a parallel between himself and
Joe and Seligman with his critics, attempts at empathy or criticism being met
with either derision or deflection, depending on the moment.

The second half, by contrast, takes on a much more
depressive tone. Sure, there are moments of comedy – two African immigrants
arguing, without subtitles, over something regarding a threesome with Joe,
their erect penises wiggling all throughout – but it takes a backseat to often
literal moments of sadism, from Jamie Bell whipping Joe until she bleeds to an
encounter between Joe and a debtor with a terrible secret. It’s at this point
where the throwbacks to earlier von Trier films (the overt political
incorrectness of Manderlay, a moment
that recalls the opening of Antichrist)
start to feel too considered, as do many of Seligman’s observations. When
Seligman admits to being asexual and inexperience with sex, it’s hard not to
smack your forehead for the critic corollary falling into such an obvious straw
man (seriously, Lars, you can voice your frustrations without resorting to
hackneyed arguments). The final twenty minutes in particular fall close to Antichrist in terms of trying way too
hard to be provocative at the expense of finding a more natural conclusion.

Still, even with its missteps, Nymphomaniac is a fascinating capstone to von Trier’s Depression
trilogy (Antichrist, Melancholia), filled
with strong supporting performances and a bravura turn from Gainsbourg. It’s a
film about trying to understand one’s sins and experiences, and the frustration
of therapy and analysis not being of any use. We may not like every turn Joe
(or von Trier) takes us down, but it’s hard not to want to know where it’s
leading.